


Try and Look Around

by Lazchan



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 15:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7514129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lazchan/pseuds/Lazchan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neku's a few years older and is well out of the Game, except for annoying friendship with someone higher up...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Try and Look Around

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written actively for this fandom in AGES; I haven't really played the game since I beat it years ago, but this fandom makes me very happy and it's fun to write it in again.

It was hard to believe that it had been almost four years since Neku had played  the Reapers Game in the UG version of Shibuya. Four years since had been killed and revived to try and renew his life and make connections to expand it. He had kept his friendships with Beat and Rhyme and Shiki. He'd made new friends at school and joined a club and did all he could to reach out and not hide away anymore.

 

He'd say that 'the Composer would be proud' and let the thought go, except he really _couldn't_ , because he knew didn't even know how Josh felt after all this time, because he was as annoying and ambiguous as he had ever been. Ever since Joshua had taken him up on the invitation to 'be friends', he'd not revealed a whit of who he was to anyone other than Neku.

 

When Neku asked what made him so special, Joshua had just laughed. ' _You're my dear partner, after all and while I could erase all your memories of the Game, it'd be more trouble than it'd be worth and why should I let my proxy forget someone like me?_ '

 

It had bothered Neku that his friends started to forget the Game after time had passed, but that too, was a natural thing. Neku supposed that the only reason why he remembered it so strongly and years later, was because Joshua was his _friend._ The almighty Composer of Shibuya liked to show up at his  home unannounced. He'd slip into the seat across from Neku at Ramen Don's, or comment idly on some sketch Neku was making without any prior notice.

 

That had been going on for years, too and Neku was somewhat amazed that Joshua hadn't found someone more interesting to annoy or harass or hell, even kill when the whim hit him. He supposed that Shibuya was thriving enough that Joshua didn't feel the need for extreme measures and senseless bets to heal his city.

 

Joshua had aged along with him and Neku had to wonder if the Composer was creeping towards the actual age when he died or if he was just humoring Neku by matching pace with him. Neku didn't think that Joshua had actually been fifteen when he died, but when he looked at Joshua down, with the edges smoothed out and his features relaxed, that the undead boy was finally settling into the image that he was most comfortable with.

 

Not that Joshua was here today—off doing Composer business; in this world or the next and Neku wasn’t about to ask. It was odd enough, the things that happened around him. The more time he spent with Josh, the more he thought about the undercurrents of the city and he could swear sometimes that he woke up with music in his ears that _didn't_ come through his headphones or radio. The last time he had asked, Joshua had just shrugged and said something about a natural influence, but since nothing else weird had happened—like seeing Players or Noise or anything else that would have sent him running from Shibuya, Neku pushed it to the side.

 

Neku was too busy sketching to see who came in the door of the ramen shop. He had graduated and while he hadn't settled into a job yet, some part of him knew that entrenching himself into a corporate lifestyle would not be a _good_ thing; he could almost hear the discordant notes that shoved him away from it.

 

_Stupid Joshua and his music metaphors. I don't think I'm ever going to escape them._

He didn't see the person come in, but when a familiar presence that _wasn't_ Joshua slid into his personal space, Neku found himself speechless for a moment, staring at Kariya, Reaper of the UG and someone Neku hadn't seen in years. He certainly hadn't changed at all, except Neku had to admit that the Reaper didn't quite look as old to him as when Neku had been fifteen and scared out of his mind.  Kariya looked amused at Neku's wide-eyed look of shock and leaned back to wait out for when Neku would recover his senses.

 

"… what are you _doing_ here?" he demanded.

 

"Getting ramen and all the other tables were full," the comment was made so blandly that Neku had to look around to make sure that Kariya wasn't completely screwing with him, but it seemed while Neku had been waiting for his ramen to come, the little shop had gotten quite busy.

 

"… where's your partner?" Neku felt the words pulled out of him unwillingly and he wondered why he even cared and why he asked and with the look that Kariya gave him, he felt as if he had slipped up somewhere and Kariya was smug in just hearing the question.

 

"Four years later and you _still_ remember the Game," Kariya whistled lowly. "And here I was thinking it was a fluke, when you recognized me, but if you're asking about Yashiro, then you really remember." He wasn't wearing the sleeveless black hoodie that Neku remembered him wearing—something a little more in style in the now and it made sense—the Reapers would keep up with what Shibuya deemed fashionable, to pull the trends in and keep them flowing.

 

Neku shrugged and stared down at the ragged lines of his drawing. "So?" he asked. "Guess I can't leave something so… life-altering… behind." He wasn’t even sure how much Kariya knew about his Game, how unusual it was and the truth about Josh, his second partner. Probably more than he'd ever let on—Kariya was a tricky one.

 

"Kid—" Kariya started eating the bowl of ramen— _Neku_ ' _s_ bowl of ramen and grinned at him. "People just don’t remember the Game. Can you imagine if we had people stating that there's an afterlife and they came back from the dead? You live, you die and sometimes you come back—but we just don't let the knowledge out about our little Game. We'd have more people dying just because they didn't think it was permanent."

 

Neku shuddered at the image; he knew just have very permanent it could be; there had been Players that hadn't been running near his group that had been Erased completely. "Well, I didn't forget and even the others…" his voice trailed off. No—his other friends hadn't remembered, not after awhile.

 

 _Side-effect of Josh indeed, but it's not like I can say that to Kariya. Joshua went way too far to hide who he was and as much of as ass as Josh is, I'm not about to spill his secret and have people killed along the way to them trying to defeat him._ Neku had no doubt about Josh's strength and none of the Reapers stood a chance against him.

 

"Hm…" Kariya pushed the new bowl of ramen towards Neku and ignored his look of distaste at the weird flavors that definitely wasn't in Neku's list of favorites. "I'd say it's unhealthy, but it's not like you're going to suddenly forget now."

 

"Why are you talking to me again?" Neku asked, staring at him. "If you didn't think I'd know you, why would be talking to a former Player? Don't you have other Players to harass? Jeez, you'd think with all the years that went by, you wouldn't even remember me."

 

Kariya's laughter was loud and shocked and somehow didn’t seem to extend out any further than the small booth they were in. "Forget _you_? The kid that spent three weeks in the Game, with three different partners and rewrote Shibuya?"

 

"Gee, maybe that's why I'm so special," Neku muttered, finally eating the ramen, consoling himself that Don hadn't ever made a bowl of ramen that he'd consider 'bad'. "Extra cycles in the wash."

 

"You're not too far off," Kariya snorted with amusement. "There's probably something else and something hanging around you that's keeping you in tune with the UG—but I can't put my finger on it, but it sticks around you. First time I was able to get you on a level to notice me, though."

 

Neku paled. "Don't tell me I'm going to see more of the UG," he muttered. "The music was weird enough and now you—don't tell me it's going to get any worse."

 

"You could be seeing the Composer, if you're looking for worst case scenarios." Kariya's expression gave nothing away and Neku suppressed his wince from giving anything away with that. _He knows somehow—he has to…._ "If you were around him, now—it'd be more than just your occasional friendly face over a bowl of ramen."

 

Neku didn't want to ask, didn't want to think about it and he stood up quickly, pushing the bowl to the side and leaving the amount for payment on the table. He forced a smile on his face as he nodded to Kariya.

 

"Good thing that's not something I'd ever come across." He needed to get away from here and have a nice, _long_ talk with Josh. Kariya simply smirked and gave him a casual wave, as if the conversation was merely put on hold for the time being.

 

It was easy to push the conversation and the odd meeting out his mind. After all—Ramen Don's was a place where the Reapers (and Players) could come inside and be seen. Kariya had taken advantage of the timing, screwed with him a bit and that was all it was. Neku wasn't gaining extra senses for the Game. The ramen shop was simply an apex where the dead and the living could meet again and Ramen Don's was an exceedingly popular spot among the UG and RG.

 

It just _happened_ that in the first time in four years, Neku saw one of the Reapers. The only person he ever saw regularly from the UG was Joshua and that was… different. Joshua had been his partner; even if it had been a sick sort of lie and somehow Joshua had become his friend.

 

Joshua made his own rules and Neku would have thought that his friends gradual memory loss and no mention of the actual Reapers Game would have been enough of a rule to not cross paths with anyone from it again. He thought Joshua might have arranged it that way. He was just grateful Josh didn't erase his memory of _any_ of the time they had in the UG, down to the last bullet.

 

He needed _something_ to remind himself that Joshua wasn't just an ass, but a dangerous creature as well; someone that didn't quite understand all the vagaries of humanity, no matter that he had once been human. Neku understood more of Joshua and why he was so unbalanced; years of friendship helped sail that leaking boat and knowing that the whims of Shibuya directed Josh just as much as Josh helped direct Shibuya helped.

 

It was also why he stayed friends with Josh. He would treat Josh just _as_ his friend and the Game was rarely mentioned, even though it hung over both of their heads at times. Certain areas, certain words or phrases and sometimes Josh would just stop in the middle of a conversation and leave, as if something or someone else caught his attention.

 

Neku was annoyed all over again that Kariya made him actively think of the Game and now he wondered just how it was going. He didn’t need to ask if it was _still_ going; he had a feeling some version of the Game had been in motion for centuries on end, far before Joshua rested on Shibuya's throne.

 

He was out of the Game, _had_ been out of the Game for years now and … _ugh, I can't even really blame Joshua for this one._

 

Instead of working his mind into a frenzy thinking about it, he headed over to one of the newer shops, where he had been talking to them about using his designs to showcase their work. He'd already had several prints that he sold and marketed around the area, but it didn't hurt to try and talk to a few more people.

 

He twitched when he saw the Reaper symbol on the door – _that hadn’t been there last time, had it?_ – and made himself relax so that the smile he gave Odiya was a real one. She didn't deserve to be thrown off by the way his mind was driving him crazy. He had just pulled out the sketches he had worked on when he was nearly bowled over by two kids, a few years younger than he was and clinging to one another's hands.

 

Neku had to force himself to take a deep breath and tell himself that kids were kids and just because his mind was stuck somewhere in the UG, it didn't mean that everyone couple he saw was a set of Players. He hadn't seen them over the years, right?

_I really don't know. It's not like they look any different than anyone else and…_ He was thinking too hard about this again and he barely heard Odiya's soft reprimand to not run in the store, but Neku shook his head and gave her a faint smile. "They look as if someone was chasing them. They can chill in here for a bit, right?"

 

The look of relief and gratitude thrown his way made Neku think that he probably wasn't too far off the mark from them being Players. He shouldn't stay here, he couldn't get tangled more into this than he already way, but after seeing Kariya—seeing Players—he didn't want to think what else was going to pop up on his radar.

 

The sensible thing to do would be to go home, put on his headphones and ignore the world at the moment until it shifted back into making sense. It would be even _smarter_ to take a break from Shibuya for a few days until things got sorted out or until Joshua sent an email pouting over him being 'away from home' for so long.

 

_It would be smartest to ignore those inane messages in the first place, but Neku didn't have enough friends that he could afford losing Josh, even as annoying as he could still be. At the heart of it all, Joshua's been my friend for ages, really shitty starts or no._

He wasn't ever that sensible and he stopped and looked at the kids, hesitating. It wasn't as if he had pins to give them. He had all of his pins still, but they were locked away in a box. The only one he carried on him was the Player pin. It was partially paranoia;  it had been the only item to truly save him at the end of it all. It was also a reminder of what had happened and what he had fought through to get to where he was.

 

If it protected him from anyone scanning him and reading his thoughts, then that was just an added bonus.

 

The kids were still staring at the windows of the ground-level shop and Neku bit his tongue to prevent him from telling them that the Noise couldn't make it in here. He _hoped_ ; that would make for a more awkward Game than he could ever imagine happening and that was putting the one he was into the mix. Which… wasn't ever really the Composer's Game and for the first time, he wondered just what Joshua's _actual_ Game was like.

 

"Ugh…." He thumped his hand against his head, earning astonished looks from Odiya and the kids. "I… I suddenly don’t think I'm feeling well, Odiya-san. I think … ah…" he flushed, feeling the tips of his ears go red when a familiar ringtone echoed in the small store. "Here are the sketches," he said quickly, pushing them towards Odiya. "Um—let me know?" His voice squeaked on the end, especially when the girl closest to him made a startled sound at his UG-inspired artwork.

 

Odiya gave him a baffled look, but her smile was as bright and cheery as always. "Of course, Neku—" she promised. "I know you were busy, but I'm glad you came by today anyway." She carefully tucked away the samples. "I'll take a look and then discuss with everyone else. I don't think it'll be a problem." She bowed as he hurried out the door and he was barely out the door and almost _felt_ that vibration change in the air before he was answering his phone.

 

Joshua didn't even give him a chance to say 'hello' before the giggle came and Neku had to stop and take a deep breath and tell himself it was impossible to kill Joshua through his phone.

 

"Oh, Neku—it seems that I finally get to have that discussion with you. Why don't you meet me outside the River and I'll have someone show you in?"

 

"Too lowly of a task for you to do it yourself, Josh?" Neku muttered, but he didn't stop walking as he talked, dodging pedestrians and cyclists and the occasional lost tourist.

 

"I'm busy, Neku," came the prim reply. "I'm sure you have noticed some extra activity recently. Don't be stubborn, dear."

 

"Don't … I---" Neku struggled for the words, but anything would have been lost anyway; there was only silence on the other end. Joshua had already hung up, so self-assured that Neku was going to come see him.

 

"One of these days, Josh…" he muttered, but he knew what the end result would be.

 

 

 


End file.
